Unison is pleased to celebrate the 80th birthday of our first director, Stuart Bigley, with an exhibition of paintings, drawings and photomontages spanning from the 1970s through the present day. Alongside his 36 years of arts programming at Unison, Bigley has upheld a committed studio practice based in drawing, photography and painting. This exhibition traces some key connecting threads that appear through different phases, media and technological advancements over several decades of his work. 

We are thrilled to launch the Stuart Bigley Scholarship to mark the occasion, which will extend local arts opportunities in our community. 

Bigley’s abstract paintings reflect his love of music; his studio listening is often embedded within his work. Early paintings distribute color with a light touch and looser brush; in later series, geometric structures function to organize the space, as translucent layers manipulate focus and balance. A recent tour of the studio archive revealed a trove of acrylic abstractions on paper, described by Bigley as a substrate which affords him the greatest freedom. As a former darkroom photographer exploring digitally, Bigley’s recent manipulated photo-based works display a playfulness and experimentation that recall his paintings on paper, with the affinity for geometry appearing as patterning, repetition and form dissolving into near-abstraction. 

Since his retirement from Unison in 2012, Bigley has redoubled his observational figure drawing practice, in a “forensic” pursuit of representation. Thousands of drawings - in pen and ink, Japanese brush-pen and more recently in water-soluble graphite - bear witness to a quest for accuracy of form. This amassed experience allows for a freedom of line that brings us back to the early abstractions.